Margo Pellegrino

Coastal paddler Margo Pellegrino will paddle her outrigger canoe from Chicago to New Orleans completing her three summer trip to spread the “clean water and healthy ocean” message to the inland waterways. She paddled from Trenton to Newark in 2014, and in ’15, from New York City to Chicago via the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and the Great Lakes. In August of this year (’16), Margo will leave Chicago and head down the Tenn-Tom Waterway to Mobile Bay where she will follow her ’09 route westward to New Orleans.

Margo and her logistics and communications crew will engage with individuals and organizations to bring media attention to problems confronting our watersheds, coasts, and oceans. Margo will focus on water quality issues like run-off, single use plastics, flooding and other riverfront/coastal vulnerabilities due to rising seas and intense rains. She will also highlight the negative affects of land-based practices on our water, what we can do to solve the problem, and why clean water and healthy, vibrant coastlines and riverfronts must be a 2016 election issue.

Margo’s paddle is OUR paddle. Together we can educate the public and our elected officials, and show them that there is a growing constituency for our water—from our watersheds into our rivers, lakes, and bays, to our ocean.